My Heart's In Dixie

First, thanks to all of you who have contacted me in the past week with comments, emails, phone calls, and in-person hugs. You can’t even begin to imagine how hearing from each of you has helped, and I am so thankful to have such supportive people in my life – especially my dear KD sisters I haven’t seen in years. (AOT indeed – love y’all!)

So here I am a week later. I am numb. I rested for a day, I cried a lot, and I threw myself into preparing to host the extended Thompson family on Christmas Day (and that, my friends, is a lot of family). My only goals for Christmas were that my princesses would have a marvelous time, and I would hold it together through the entire day. Mission accomplished, I spent most of Saturday in bed or on the couch, watching the girlies enjoy their gifts and even occasionally joining in to play.

At first I thought I was numb because I was so exhausted. But, having slept more in the past couple of days than I have for most of December, I don’t think that’s the case. I think my brain is just trying to wrap itself around what has happened and what can, or should, or might, happen next.

My first miscarriage (and first pregnancy), almost exactly eight years ago, was the result of a blighted ovum- we never got to see a heartbeat before we found out the pregnancy was lost. I’ve always described that experience as a loss of innocence about pregnancy, and anyone who’s ever had a miscarriage can probably relate. Instead of worrying about morning sickness and stretch marks and cankles (none of them fun, I know), I worried about far different things during my second (and third) pregnancies – I checked the toilet tissue for spots of blood every time I went to the bathroom and felt like didn’t fully breathe until we saw those little heartbeats at seven weeks. Even after, that “shadow” – as my doctor describes it – never really left, because I never felt completely secure. I knew what could happen – not just intellectually, but in my heart – and the mere thought was intensely painful. 

(Please know, I’m not trying to minimize the fear of miscarriage that every pregnant woman experiences. I’m just trying to explain – and not very well, I’m afraid – that once you have experienced it, you never fully relax, and you never take one single day of your pregnancy for granted. Each day is a gift you relish.)

Now, with the loss of our baby after having seen the heartbeat (that theoretical line that, if you cross it, gives you a 95 percent chance that all will be well – given that, I’m glad I’ve never had the urge to gamble), I feel stuck in processing it. I want to understand what happened, but once I get that information (which may take six weeks), I don’t know what I’ll do with it. We realize now how much we really want another baby, but do we want to play the odds again? Can we even get pregnant again? I’m no spring chicken – was it a fluke that we got pregnant this time? And if we do get pregnant, at what point do I really believe we’re going to bring a baby home from the hospital?

And as I struggle with all this, I also struggle with why I’m even asking these questions. I know there are no answers to these questions. I know God is completely in control of all of this. I need to simply surrender it all to Him and look to Him for guidance and comfort. I know He is there – so why can I not just let go? Why am I struggling with my faith when He has always been faithful?

So I am numb. And I am praying. And I don’t know what will happen next.

As many of you know (at least those who keep up with me on Facebook), I recently announced we were unexpectedly - but thrilled to be – pregnant. Unfortunately, despite several ultrasounds that showed a healthy baby with a strong heartbeat, for some unknown reason our baby died sometime late last week.

After discovering the baby’s death by ultrasound Saturday afternoon (and thank you to my wonderful doctor, Elan Simckes, for leaving his family on the weekend to personally conduct the ultrasound, rather than sending me to a hospital ER), I had surgery late Saturday night to recover the remains so that genetic testing can be done in an effort to understand what happened. Given that it happened almost ten weeks in and that everything looked great, my doctor suspects a catastrophic genetic disorder such as Turner Syndrome. Once the testing is complete, I am so grateful that St. John’s Mercy Medical Center, through their Heart Prints program, will bury our baby in a special area of Calvary Cemetary in St. Louis.

I know some will say that we should not have shared our pregnancy news, especially with our children, until we had safely passed through the first trimester. To those people I would respectfully and with love offer the following for them to consider. We decided to go ahead and share our joyous news for several reasons: we did wait until we had seen a heartbeat on ultrasound twice and our doctor was confident that the baby looked great – once the heartbeat is seen, there is a more than 95% chance that a miscarriage won’t occur; we felt that the more people knew, the more people would pray for us, which we felt was very important; and, if something did go wrong, we knew we would need the support and help of our family and friends.

Some people might be able to hide that they’ve suffered a miscarriage – everyone handles grief in different ways. I am not one of those people. I’m usually a pretty upbeat person, but right now I am very sad, and I need to be able to be sad without having to either fake it that everything’s okay or come up with some goofy excuse for being less-than-perky. I also need to be able to share all of life – the great happiness and the great pain – with my family, including our children.

Loss is a part of life that, as much as we try to protect our children from, sometimes reaches them. With guidance from our wonderfully supportive doctor and pastor, we have gently but truthfully shared the news with our children. They are sad, but they are already thanking God in their prayers for taking “Peanut” (as they’d already christened the baby) to Heaven to be with Him. We have surrounded them with love from family and friends to help them work through their feelings and emerge even stronger and more resilient than they already are.

As for me – I am sad. I am grieving. I am crying a lot. It’s hard to even breathe when you have to discuss burying a baby – those are words that should never have to be spoken by any mother. But God is with me and has walked right beside me through this whole nightmare weekend. And through the haze of pain, He has shown me such love  and grace – my dear husband has been a rock and an incredible blessing, we’ve had amazing friends step up to take care of the girls with such love and open arms, and our family has been understanding and attentive. God is so good.

With God’s love and help, we will be okay. We will get through this, and someday we may even think about trying again. But right now, we’re going to mourn our loss and keep leaning on God’s grace and mercy to get us through. Thank you all for your prayers and love – they are needed and much appreciated. God bless you all.

(Cross-posted on Conversations, Southern Style)

One of my favorite holidays is almost here. Seriously, what’s not to like about a holiday where you stuff yourself silly and then watch football until its time to stuff yourself silly again? It definitely gives Christmas a run for its money.

In honor of Turkey Day, I started a tradition last year on this blog that I’ve decided must become an annual event. To that end, I give you the funniest Thanksgiving TV show episode ever, and a great example of how improper planning for an event can have disastrous consequences…especially when live turkeys are involved. Heh.

(Note: Further demonstrating the superiority of Macs over PCs, I was easily able to embed the code for the video on my Conversations site, because I manage it through iWeb. This is, of course, a WordPress blog – and it sucks. So, you can either click the link below to see the show, or you can click the link above to my business blog and see it right there. Thank you, Steve Jobs.)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Turkeys Away on Hulu